Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday September 02, 2008 @04:53PM
from the how-many-fingers dept.

Lord Satri writes "Well, almost. Google signed an exclusivity deal with GeoEye regarding GeoEye-1, the most advanced high-resolution, civil, remote-sensing satellite to date. This must be annoying for other high-resolution, remote-sensing data users since Google already has an exclusivity deal in place with DigitalGlobe, the other major civil satellite imagery provider. From the CNet article: 'Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery... in its Google Maps and Google Earth product. And as a little icing on the cake, Google's logo is on the side of the rocket set to launch the 4,300-pound satellite in six days from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. GeoEye-1 will orbit 423 miles above Earth, but it will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 41 centimeters... Google, though, is permitted to use data only with a resolution of 50 cm because of the terms of GeoEye's license with the US government.'"

I still guzzle V8 when I have it around. I can go through half-gallon bottle in a day easily, so I usually don't buy it because it's expensive to drink $4 worth of beverage in a day. (Milk and unsweetened iced tea make up the vast majority of what I drink.)

The only reason it's evil is because it ultimately relies on copyright law. This exclusivity agreement would be worthless if Google couldn't prosecute people using the images they display to provide a competing service.

I wish they'd provide a bit more focus. I can get more information about naruto than anyone could wish for, great. But I can't get access to primary sources with which to evaluate medical or scientific issues. I know there's a lot of problems involved with getting the public free access to journals, but google has a lot of clout and coudl make a big difference there.

I know there's a lot of problems involved with getting the public free access to journals, but google has a lot of clout and coudl make a big difference there.

The publishing of scientific journals is a business. No amount of "clout" is sufficient to convince the folks that run these journals that they should give it all away free and go make money working at a hot dog stand or something.

Contrariwise, there would be anti-competitive elements to an open agreement as well. There would be basically no opportunity for satellite competition, due to massive barrier to entry and smart pricing schemes by GeoEye. An exclusivity deal means lower resolution satellite data still has buyers, and google competitors could support the launching of another satellite.

Honestly, it is hard to trade things like this without exclusivity. You wouldn't want to buy rights to have Michael Phelps on your cereal if he also said he would appear on every other brand of cereal for whatever price they were offering. It would be worth basically nothing to everyone, whereas, with exclusivity, it is at least worth something to someone. Likewise, there is no point in google or anyone else throwing billions at GeoEye to become the highest resolution online map service if GeoEye then licenses the same data to everyone. It may be that the value of the data in such a scenario is not even enough to finance the satellite launch, in which case, the possibility of exclusivity is definitely a beneficent aspect of the market--giving consumers a product that would simply not exist without it.

Anyway, one really must debate the merit of anti-competitive policies concerning something google is giving away for free. It's not as though the market is going to drive down the price of "free."

Johnson: [Noticing Dr. Evil's spaceship on radar] Colonel, you better have a look at this radar.
Colonel: What is it, son?
Johnson: I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant--
Jet Pilot: Dick.
Dick: Yeah?
Jet Pilot: Take a look out of starboard.
Dick: Oh my God, it looks like a huge--
Bird-Watching Woman: Pecker.
Bird-Watching Man: [raising binoculars] Ooh, Where?
Bird-Watching Woman: Wait, that's not a woodpecker, it looks like someone's--
Army Sergeant: Privates! We have reports of an unidentified flying object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with--
Baseball Umpire: Two balls.
[looking up from game]
Baseball Umpire: What is that. It looks just like an enormous--
Chinese Teacher: Wang, pay attention!
Wang: I was distracted by that giant flying--
Musician: Willie.
Willie Nelson: Yeah?
Musician: What's that?
Willie Nelson: [squints] Well, that looks like a giant--
Colonel: Johnson?!
Johnson: Yes, sir?
Colonel: Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.

Some precisions on my summary. DigitalGlobe is obviously not the only other remote sensing data provider, but it's GeoEye main competitor in civil high-resolution multispectral remote sensing. GeoEye is itself the merging of two other previous major players on the same playing field, OrbImage and Space Imaging [slashgeo.org].

As for my claim of an agreement between DigitalGlobe and Google, see this two years old entry [slashgeo.org]. The original archive for the DG message is here [osdir.com] (the link on/geo does not work anymore).

One of the obvious questions that comes to mind is to which extent these exclusivity deals have negative impacts on other remote sensing imagery customers, small or big.

Another question is; does Google really needs such a deal to provide the best webmapping and virtual globes-related tools?

I keep hoping that Google will start releaseing some of their data into the public domain/GPL/Creative Commons.That Google spy van must be gathering data like speed limits, which streets are one way. Maybe even which are paved and not.One place missing GPL application is a really good navigation system.

I keep hoping that Google will start releaseing some of their data into the public domain/GPL/Creative Commons.That Google spy van must be gathering data like speed limits, which streets are one way. Maybe even which are paved and not.

You're right for StreetView (you can still use Google's StreetView data in OpenLayers.org [openlayers.org] for example), otherwise, Google Maps/Earth licenses data from others (Tele Atlas/NAVTEQ/DigitalGlobe/GeoEye/etc), so they are not the ultimate geodata owner (yet?;-).

One place missing GPL application is a really good navigation system.

Yes but... do you really need this? When you'll buy your GPS-enabled navigation system (e.g. from Garmin, Magellan, TomTom, etc), you'll be given appropriate software that works with the hardware you just purchased (even the iPhone [slashgeo.org] has (in dev) it's turn

Considering it costs millions and millions of dollars to develop and launch an orbital satellite, there is no way GeoEye could make money by only exclusively licensing the use of its imagery to Google. I am guessing that Google fronted much/most of the development and launch costs for the satellite. Basically I would assume that Google owns the satellite and GeoEye is simply managing the logistics of orbiting, photgraphing, and maintenance.

If Google did front most of the costs, then it's not anti-competative to ask GeoEye to agree to only allow Google use of the photos. If GeoEye fronted all of the costs themselves, then how do they plan to make money off a multi-million dollar investement by simply licensing use of the photographs to a single entity?

Satellites are not vital infrastructure like telephone lines. As such, I doubt there is any legal standing to say what GeoEye can and can't do with their own satellite (especially if Google DID provide some initial funding).

Oh, I just RTFA, and apparently Google is the only "online mapping company" allowed to use the photographs. I guess Google just paid a lot for those rights. Kinda like how Pepsi is the official soft drink of the International League of Woman Voters (though no one considers this to be legally anti-competative to Coke or Royal Crown Cola).

NPR Science friday just had a discussion with GeoEye. [npr.org] They will also snap a photo of anyplace you ask them to for a cost. They go into some details of the process and it was a neat little interview. Things like it's in a polar orbit, whipping around the north to south pole every 90 minutes.

Excuse me but competition is defined as somebody winning and somebody losing. Google is winning and doesn't appear to be cheating, how can that be anti-competitive? I wish you people would figure out that a monopoly isn't evil, it is the goal of all companies. Illegally suppressing your rivals is anti-competitive, cornering the market is not.

My biggest concern as a consumer of GIS data has always been access to the high-quality, tax-payer funded data (which is usually aerial, not satellite). Exclusivity deals are fine as long as any data gathered from the instruments for tax-payer funded programs remains accessible without restrictions.

I'm not sure how deals such as Google's will affect this, but as the parent pointed out, there are already many sources of high-quality data from government sources.

If there is something to fear from Google Maps/Earth, it's the spatial imagery mono-culture developing around consumer and media GIS applications. Google's approach is by no means the best approach for all geospatial data, it just happens to work well for navigating large data sets. But, as we've learned from Microsoft, if enough people are using a solution, the level of technology present in dominant solution becomes the "state-of-the-art" even if it isn't.

I don't think that there's much of a difference, but if there's going to be a line in how high resolution they can distribute, they have to draw it somewhere. They can't let things go by just because it's "only a little bit better" than what's allowed, or else there might as well not be a line there at all.

But if you're limited to 50cm, that means that you're not going to be able to accurately identify a number of things. You'd be able to pick out a book on a table, but you'd not know what it was. You might be able to tell that that lady is sunbathing in the nude, but not actually see anything.

It also makes it more difficult to tell objects apart from each other.

But if you're limited to 50cm, that means that you're not going to be able to accurately identify a number of things. You'd be able to pick out a book on a table, but you'd not know what it was. You might be able to tell that that lady is sunbathing in the nude, but not actually see anything.

50cm is like half a meter. Most people are under 2 meters tall, and between 50cm and 100cm wide. So if you had a resolution of 50cm, you wouldn't see a 'lady sunbathing in the nude' you'd see 1x4 to 2x4 block of colored pixels. Try to draw a 'woman sunbathing in the nude' using 8 pixels. Now using 4-8 pixels draw each of 'borat wearing a g-string', a pig, a camel, a litter of cocker spaniels, a beige hammock, and a cardboard box and explain how to tell them apart.

For comparison the 'mario' in the original Nintendo "Super Mario Brothers" was around 400 pixels. And they had to dedicate the entire top 3rd to his head just so that he'd have a discernable eye, nose, and moustache.

It's fairly easy to get around the limitations you pointed out if you're familiar with how GPS operates and have a solid electronics/programming background. The limitation stops only the least motivated.

IAAMD and let me tell you that, indeed most of us doctors could manipulate a soldering iron (except maybe for psychiatrists). You just have to realize that it's mostly like routine work, except that this peculiar patient has less tendency to bleed.

Google starts plans for Moon base and Mars base, right after the space elevator is completed, and the new high power laser defense system the army is working on gets better than 19% efficiency. (to combat alien intruders) Oh, and they need the flying cars as well to round out the high tech glory.

Plus new Mars and Moon search services will be launched. Find your future lost relatives on Mars or the Moon.

My understanding is that at 50cm resolution, an object that is 50cm across would appear as a single pixel on the image. So, a manhole cover in the street might show up as a single pixel at that resolution. A car's hood might be four pixels, etc. Objects that are smaller than 50cm should not be detectible, especially if they are close to the same color as the background. However, if you zoom in on almost any American city to maximum resolution on google maps's satellite view, you will clearly see traffic lines. Traffic lines are roughly 10cm wide. Often these resolve to two pixels.

So, either my understanding of satellite photo resolution is wrong, or Google can already go to 10cm, and possibly even 5cm resolution.

recently, there were 'multiple exposure' (roughly) algorithms being used to 'look thru' the heat, pollution and general waviness of the sky, in plotting out celestial objects.

and even *with* diffraction, you can overcome it with sharpening. I often shoot my photos 'with too high an f-stop' according to common theory; but my post-processing overcomes the diffraction issues in practice; and I get the nice large depth-of-field that I was after with quite good sharpness, as well.

if you get multiple shots, exposures or angles of a subject, you can 'subtract out' quite a lot of noise and distortion. single shots can't do this but multiple ('high dyn range' or HDR) shooting can.

Afaict all the google earth images where you can make out individual people are aerial photographs not sattalite images (google earth uses aerial photographs where they are available and sattalite imageary where they are not).

I think with this new satalite you might see a slight difference in pixel color where a person was standing if the background was even but you wouldn't be able to tell it was a person. Another order of magnitude improvement and it would probablly be comparable to the aerial photographs

You managed to spell satellite in two different ways in your post, both of them wrong.
Nothing wrong with having trouble spelling, especially if English isn't your first language - but Firefox does have a built in spell-checker these days...

Defining optical resolution from space is a bit tricky, as several generations of optical engineers have discovered.

The main criterion is the telescope's point spread function - this is roughly the angular diameter that a pinpoint star appears to be, as seen through the telescope. We want the smallest point spread function, and it should map onto about one to three sensor pixels. (arguments go here about over/undersampling).

The Fourier Transform of the point spread function is the Optical Transfer Function, which is a graph of the spatial frequencies response of the telescope. It's analogous to a hifi's frequency response... it's an engineering challenge to prevent high frequencies from getting rolled off.

The main limit for high resolution is the diameter of the primary mirror (All mirrors and optical elements, no matter how perfect, have diffraction effects which spread out the light and reduce resolution. The bigger the entrance pupil, the greater the resolution) For the GeoEye, orbiting at 684Km and a resolution of 0.4m, I roughly calculate the primary mirror is somewhere around a half-meter diameter or so, depending on the wavelength of light it's optimized for.

Other things limit resolution - scattering of light in clear air (Rayleigh scattering) screws up the image, especially in the blue. Dust, haze, clouds and urban pollution are a bother, but not as much as you might think. Naturally, there's lots of image processing software... quite compute intensive.

A typical human, seen from above and not casting a shadow, is about 20 to 60 cm across. So someone walking down the street should appear on a few (1 to 5) pixels. Not enough to recognize someone, especially since you're looking down on 'em.

GeoEye-1 is scheduled to launch aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg AFB Sep 4 11:50am PDT. However, unconfirmed reports state that the launch may be delayed because Hurricane Hanna has grounded east coast support personnel.

I live about 50 miles north of Vandenberg and can see most daylight, night, and evening launches. The evening launches are spectacular, although I have only seen one. Its pretty cloudy outside right now. I hope it is clear on Thursday.

This is good news. Google Earth is one of my favorite applications, but I have been frustrated by the resolution of many areas outside of cities. I will have to do better at hiding my secret nuclear missile silo though.:-)

I thought we already established that WMD are only 49cm across.
You don't need to hide it, just paint it beige and it will look like a nude woman sunbathing... or a litter of spaniels.
What is the differnce between the 3?

I did RTFA but nowhere did I see any information about which orbit they're going to use.

It can't be geosynchronous because that wouldn't allow them to photograph all of the country at once. In order to cover the whole US, they'll need to have an orbit that passes the satellite over different parts of the country at different times.

The interesting thing is that in order to get such an orbit, it has to pass over other countries. Will Google take footage of other countries? If so, will it use that footage? That would probably require some intense international negotiations.

423 miles is stated in the summary which implies Low-earth orbit, most likely. The word choice doesn't seem to support it, but it could be on an elliptical orbit that takes it out to 423 miles, which increases the exposure time on the given spot. But to do that it would have to dip pretty low, causing small(but significant over months/years) drag. Also, I'm commenting on the new Google Satellite while test driving the new Google Browser

The interesting thing is that in order to get such an orbit, it has to pass over other countries. Will Google take footage of other countries? If so, will it use that footage? That would probably require some intense international negotiations.

What?Of course they'll use those pictures (footage is for video).

If other countries do not want Google to put them online, they'll have to come and say so.Google has already been asked/told by various countries to lower the resolution of sensitive military installations, because Google didn't do so for non-US/Euro countries.

Long story short: If you don't want something to be visible in satellite photos, cover it up or put it underground. Governments know to do this by now.

The interesting thing is that in order to get such an orbit, it has to pass over other countries. Will Google take footage of other countries? If so, will it use that footage? That would probably require some intense international negotiations.

Actually, it will not. I'm not sure if it's codified anywhere in international law or just by historical precedent, but a nation's airspace does not extend into space. A satellite can legally take photos of anything it can see, and there's little a country can do about it except hide things under cover or shoot it down (which likely would be considered an act of war).

Some countries (like the US) can exert control in limited ways by restricting operations if the imaging company does business in the country, but that's it.

Most satellites for earth observation use sun-synchronous orbits. These orbits let the satellite's cameras take pictures ob objects at the same solar time. This means that it will pass overhead at the same local time every day... so the images will have the same shadow characteristics.

You accomplish this by making the orbit precess exactly 360 degrees per solar year.

These orbits are typically nearly circular, but needn't be; you can put a spy satellite into a sun-synchronous elliptical orbit, so it'll swoops down and photograph near perigee, then waste a lot of time around apogee.

Since this orbit is around 684 Km, it can be shown that it must be pretty close to circular, has an orbital period of around 100 minutes, and its inclination is probably about 96 to 100 degrees (meaning that the satellite is slightly retrograde - 90 degrees inclination is polar, zero degrees is equatorial) In turn, this means that pretty much all of earth will be seen by the satellite, except for 8 degree circles around the poles.

A 96 minute period means that each successive orbit will look down on a place 15 degrees west... one time zone to the west.

Geosynchronous orbits are pretty useless for this type of work, since they're so far away (you need really big telescopes to get much resolution). Also, you'd only see one hemisphere, and half the year it'd be nighttime over the areas you want to see.

This is the american way of doing business. Competition exists to ensure that customers get the best possible price. That's why we tolerate it. That's why we encourage it. When a company talks about putting up "barriers to entry" and signs exclusive deals with all the suppliers, we don't get the benefits of competition anymore.